Magnifico

by Miles J. Unger

  The one sour note was the pope’s irritation at Lorenzo for having publicized an appointment that Innocent wished to keep secret. Given the inconvenient fact of Giovanni’s extreme youth—at thirteen, he was the youngest cardinal ever appointed—Innocent had instructed Lorenzo to keep quiet for three years until his elevation would appear less of an embarrassment. But Lorenzo had no intention of keeping such spectacular news secret, excusing himself on the grounds “that [the nomination] was a thing of such public notoriety in Rome that people here can hardly be blamed for following the example set there, and I could not refuse to accept the congratulations of all these citizens, down to the very poorest. If it was unseemly it was impossible to prevent.” Lorenzo was being disingenuous: while he was correct when he said such matters were difficult to suppress, he never had any intention of forgoing the benefits that would come his way as soon as people learned of Giovanni’s elevation. No one could doubt now that the pope was Lorenzo’s creature through and through, and anyone who had business with the Holy Father—which was to say pretty much anyone in a position of authority in Europe and beyond—had to take into consideration the feelings and interests of the First Citizen of Florence.

  Settling the future of his two oldest sons was the key to putting the family’s fortunes on a firm foundation, but his other children had their part to play as well in the dynastic game. In selecting spouses for his remaining children, Lorenzo was motivated largely by the need to heal the wounds that had been opened up in the body politic by the Medici’s sudden rise into the aristocracy of Europe. Though he had crushed the Pazzi, who in any case seemed to have little support, Lorenzo understood that among the ancient families of Florence there remained a reservoir of ill feeling that would need to be drained were his family to avoid a repetition of that sorry episode. With this in mind, in 1488 he espoused his oldest daughter, Lucrezia, to Jacopo Salviati (cousin of the infamous archbishop), thus hoping to draw the fangs of those who still sympathized with the Pazzi cause. In an effort to close the rift that had opened up between the branches of the family descended from Giovanni di Bicci’s two sons, Luigia, Lorenzo’s third daughter, was promised to Giovanni de’ Medici, a descendant of Pierfrancesco. (Her untimely death in 1488, when she was only eleven, dashed hopes of an easy reconciliation.) Following a similar pattern of building up local alliances, Contessina was espoused to Piero Ridolfi, from an old and distinguished Florentine family long allied with the Medici, a final effort to demonstrate that they had not risen so high that they had forgotten their neighbors.*

  It was not only through marrying off his children that Lorenzo worked to bridge the gulf that had opened up between the first citizen and the people of Florence, a gulf that only widened with each new Medici triumph and with each new proof that Republican government, and the social compact it implied between the leading families of the city, was failing. The ancient institutions—the Signoria in their splendid ermine-lined robes, the boisterous councils of the People and of the Commune where democratic sentiment still ran strong—continued to meet in the Palace of the Priors, but they were reduced to little more than a pantomime meant to distract the citizens while the real business of government went on behind closed doors wherever Lorenzo met with his cronies.

  Instinctively, and without any well-thought-out plan, Lorenzo was groping toward another kind of leadership, one based on his personal aura, on his achievements and his character—in a word, on his Magnificence—rather than on the fickle coalitions and deal-making that characterized Florentine politics in the past. This personal style of leadership had been implicit from the beginning as his parents trotted out the lisping infant in full regalia to star in the city’s many processions and pageants. It had continued in the cult of youth built around him and his brother, Giuliano. After his accession to power, and especially after the Pazzi conspiracy, Lorenzo had eschewed such obvious glamour, but only in order to project an image of himself as a sober statesman, father to his people. To retain a hold on his fellow citizens after he had eviscerated the institutions through which political legitimacy was conferred, he had to create a “charismatic center” without offending his fellow citizens by assuming the trappings of royalty. He did this, above all, by leading the life of an exemplary citizen, doing more and doing better those things that were expected of any man of substance. If charity was the obligation of every Christian, he was a paragon of pious giving; if a gentleman was supposed to be learned, Lorenzo was a scholar beyond compare. In an age that valued the well-rounded person, Lorenzo’s mastery of all the noble pursuits of mind and body astounded even those accustomed to talented polymaths. Nor was he shy about trumpeting his accomplishments since he knew that they raised his standing in the eyes of his compatriots. And the men who supped at his table and enjoyed the comforts of his home knew how to repay his generosity by singing his praises: “Blest in your genius,” wrote Poliziano of his patron,

  your capacious mind

  Not to one science or one theme confined

  By grateful interchange fatigue beguiles

  In private studies and in public toils.

  This aura of magnificence was cultivated as well through his material possessions, which betokened not only immense wealth but refinement of mind. The reach of the Medici banking empire through space and time was manifest in his home filled with Flemish tapestries and swords of damascene steel forged in the armories of the Levant, in ancient statues dug from the ground and manuscripts unearthed from dusty libraries. Those lucky enough to receive an invitation spread the word of the dazzling collections of objets d’arts to which he was daily adding, so that the palace on the Via Larga, so austere on the outside, began to seem like the fabled treasury of some Oriental potentate.

  To those not easily impressed by such intangibles he had other, more practical, gifts to bestow. Using his own private funds and the unparalleled resources of the Medici bank, he ensured a steady supply of grain to the city that kept the price of bread low. Lorenzo’s own coin flowed into the poorest sections of the city where he knew he was purchasing goodwill that he could tap into in times of crisis.* For those who worried about Florence’s standing in the world, Lorenzo’s personal prestige only added to the credit of the city as a whole. He was a friend of kings, and now of popes, correspondent with all the mighty of Europe, who sought his advice on a wide range of subjects. Even the Ottoman sultan thought so highly of Lorenzo that he sent lions and giraffes to populate his private menagerie. In time he was called simply il Magnifico, the term of respect used to denote any person of wealth and rank, now clinging to him almost as a title and testifying to his unique claim on the loyalty of his people. His authority had been built over years of careful maneuvering, but in the end it rested on his countrymen’s recognition that, in the phrase of one his critics, Lorenzo was the greatest Florentine in history.

  Despite this carefully crafted image, Lorenzo’s success depended equally on his ability to convince the people that he was one of them. His style of leadership was grand but not aloof. To the end of his life he remained very much the citizen of Florence, greeting supporters and meeting with petitioners in the piazza or in church. According to one account, Lorenzo held daily audiences in the public square “to whomever wanted it.” When his portrait is included in contemporary paintings, as in the Sassetti chapel, there is nothing that distinguishes him from his fellow citizens. Indeed, Lorenzo’s presence in the lives of his subjects was far more intimate and human-scaled than that of any king. His authority was reinforced through the symbolism of intimacy rather than of awe, a symbolism he projected, particularly in the last five years of his life, through the public ceremonies and festivals that filled the Florentine calendar.

  Lorenzo’s well-publicized return to the stage of Florentine life, which began a full decade after the murder of his brother, marked the reversal of a long-term trend. After his youth, in which he had been the star attraction on many an occasion, culminating in his own joust of 1469, he had avoided putti
ng himself on public display. The desire to withdraw from the public eye seems to have been at least partly psychological. In his Commento Lorenzo recalled being dragged to a festival by his friends “almost against my will…for I had been for some time rather alienated from such occasions.” But political considerations played a part as well. Even before the Pazzi conspiracy, Lorenzo had sought to diminish the June feast of St. John the Baptist, the traditional celebration of the Florentine commune. His grudging attitude toward this festival is confirmed in a reproachful letter Luigi Pulci wrote him in 1472: “I am a little amazed that you have diminished this festa as much as you have. You are after all a citizen and fond of the patria, of which the Baptist is protector, and we ought to honor him.” But this was exactly the problem: in a city ever more firmly dominated by one family, such a communal festival seemed at odds with the new reality.

  This austerity was more pronounced in the wake of his brother’s murder as if the entire city had entered an extended period of mourning. But as Lorenzo grew more secure, and as the shock and bitterness of that troubled time wore off, he began to relax this ascetic policy and to interject himself more insistently into the public consciousness. This time, however, instead of putting himself on display, he preferred to play a strictly behind-the-scenes role. In June of 1488, partly to celebrate the marriage of Maddalena and Francesco Cibo, Lorenzo breathed new life into the Feast of St. John by allowing the elaborate floats that had once been the glory of the parade. It was as if Lorenzo sensed that he was in danger of losing the hearts and minds of the people even as he gripped more tightly the levers of power. As Machiavelli notes in his Histories, the Medici generally followed “bread and circuses” policy meant to keep the people distracted and entertained. “[I]n these peaceful times,” he observed, “[Lorenzo] kept his fatherland always in festivities: there frequent jousts and representations of old deeds and triumphs were to be seen; and his aim was to keep the city in abundance, the people united, and the nobility honored.”

  But while the traditional communal festivals were revived, it was with a difference. Lorenzo took a particular interest in Carnival, a peculiar choice since this bacchanal was considered by many to be a “feast of the devil.” Carnival, as opposed to the more civic-minded feast of St. John, had long been an occasion for aristocratic families to show off their wealth and power, and Lorenzo may well have intended to wrest this popular celebration from oligarchic control. Under Lorenzo’s management it shed some of its aristocratic exclusivity and embraced both rich and poor in a symbolic reconciliation of the entire community. The very young and the very poor, groups previously marginalized, were now encouraged to form associations where they gained a sense of pride and common purpose. Lorenzo promoted the formation of new confraternities made up of young boys and of members of the economic underclass, each marching under their own banners, developing their own rituals, and discovering in the process a new sense of identity.

  Formation of these new ritual groups eased some of the social tensions that characterized Florentine society. They also provided Lorenzo a means of insinuating himself more directly into people’s lives. A confraternity made up of those who had previously been without a voice, organized under Lorenzo’s aegis, was much more likely to be loyal to him than an institution like the Guelf Party that had deep roots in the oligarchic past. One newly founded group was that of the wool-beaters (battilani), among the poorest of the urban proletariat, whose charter was approved by the government in 1488, reversing a century-and-a-half prohibition against such working-class associations. In 1489 Lorenzo inserted himself even more blatantly into the picture when he lent his own personal tableware—emblazoned with the red balls of the Medici crest—for the table of the “king” of the Oltrarno wool-workers during their May Day celebrations.

  All of this was part of a larger effort to place himself at the imaginative and emotional heart of the republic. While Lorenzo was always something less than a king in terms of his legal authority, in other ways he went beyond the traditional role of a head of state. Perhaps it was because he did not possess a monarch’s rigid dignity that he was able to participate personally in the rituals of his fellow citizens, designing the floats, choreographing the festivities, scripting the sacred dramas, and writing the words that were sung by choirs as they marched through the streets. In 1491 he composed his play The Martyrdom of Saints John and Paul, for one of these newly formed youth organizations, the Vangelista, a boys confraternity in which his youngest son, Giuliano, was enrolled. The same year the Company of the Star was formed to stage the elaborate symbolic programs that Lorenzo was now orchestrating:

  Lorenzo de’ Medici having conceived the idea, he had the Company of the Star construct fifteen trionfi [floats] designed by him [recorded Tribaldo de’ Rossi]. [They showed] Aemilius Paulus triumphing in Rome on returning from a city with so much treasure that Rome’s populace never paid taxes for forty or fifty years, so much treasure had he conquered…. As Aemilius Paulus had provided such booty at the time of Caesar Augustus, Lorenzo de’ Medici provided it [now]. There were five richly caparisoned squadrons of horses in battle dress alongside the said trionfi, and [Lorenzo] had them brought from their stables to take part in this tribute. Forty or fifty pairs of oxen pulled the said trionfi. It was considered the worthiest thing that had ever processed on San Giovanni.

  The propagandistic intent of such productions is evident, but it would be a mistake to believe that Lorenzo was motivated exclusively by political considerations. “We’re going forth to pleasure all,” sing the lovely damsels in Lorenzo’s “Song of the Cicadas,”

  “As is the law of Carnival….

  What good will be our loveliness

  If as we chatter it grows less.

  Long live love and gentle manners!

  Death to envy and to slanders!

  Talk, then, you who love hearsay

  While you prattle, we will play!”

  This is not the message of someone who was consumed day and night by affairs of state. One could argue that these simple verses did more to endear him to the people than those more overtly propagandistic efforts, but all attempts to reduce Lorenzo to an exclusively political animal are bound to fail. Clearly this was work that he enjoyed, and these songs were above all an expression of his personality. Earthy and erotic, they convey both his hedonism and the melancholy, never far from the surface, that urged him to flee those darker demons of his soul by throwing himself headlong into sensual pleasures.

  In the summer of 1490, word began to spread of a monk recently arrived in Florence from the north. His unblemished character, deep religious passion, and rare oratorical gifts were drawing crowds of admirers to the cloister of San Marco. Florentines, who despite their reputation for paganism always had a taste for fire and brimstone, were clearly entranced. So many showed up that soon he had to move out of the lecture hall and into the cloister’s garden. Here in the shade of a rose bower, the monk urged his audience to renounce the ways of the world and return to the purity of the Apostles. “Why do we not follow Jesus and become like little children, simple, trusting, and pure?” he asked rhetorically.

  In a city where even the Sunday sermon was larded with classical allusions and priests vied with each other in building elaborate philosophical confections derived from Plato and Aristotle, such simple piety was both shocking and refreshing. The monk’s fervor captured the vague sense of unease that hung in the air. Florence was a city where the rich lived in luxury while the poor suffered in unimaginable squalor, where the educated preferred the erotic tales of Ovid to the homely parables of scripture. The priests whose job it was to save men’s souls had grown so accustomed to their comforts that they neglected their flocks and set an example of vice that their parishioners were only too happy to emulate. The Dominican’s words tore through the veil of complacency to reveal something rotten at the heart of Florentine society. Both Pico and Poliziano attended his harangues and were moved by his sincerity. Soon he was invi
ted to carry his message to a larger audience in the cathedral of Florence.

  It was during the Lenten season of 1491 that Girolamo Savonarola first stood on the pulpit in the Duomo and aimed a series of jeremiads at a city he likened to a new Sodom or Gomorrah. He prophesied a storm both great and terrifying that would sweep away the wicked and cleanse a land fouled by sin. His first target was the Church itself, a “false proud whore, the whore of Babylon” so corrupted by simony and steeped in every vice that it offered sinners employment rather than redemption. “If there is no change soon,” he warned, “the Church of Italy shall be punished for not preaching the pure gospel of salvation.”

  Then he turned his wrath on his own audience. They thought of nothing but their own pleasure, he railed; they had forgotten Christ’s injunction to care for their fellow men. Turning away, if only momentarily, from metaphysics, he demanded social justice. “The poor…are oppressed by taxes, and when they pay intolerable sums, the rich cry: Give me the rest. Some, with an income of fifty, pay an impost of a hundred, while the rich pay little because their taxes are levied arbitrarily. When widows come weeping, they are told: Go to bed. When the poor complain, they are told: Pay, Pay!” How could a society that spent so much on adorning churches with gilded altarpieces and jewel-encrusted reliquaries turn a blind eye to human misery? How could men build monuments to their own vanity while their neighbors starved in the gutters outside their palace gates? He attacked banking, that most Florentine of professions and the basis of many a great family’s fortune. “No one can persuade you that usury is sinful, you defend it at the peril of your souls,” he declared. As he looked about this most beautiful of cities he found little to praise. The glories of art and architecture, music and literature for which the century is remembered held little attraction for him. They were, in fact, mere vanities, false idols meant to distract men and lead them from the path of salvation.